Council for Higher Education Accreditation

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) has a number of publications identifying standards and best practices in distance learning. These include: Accreditation and Assuring Quality in Distance Learning and Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs, available at the following Web sites, respectively:
http://www.chea.org/Research/Accred-Distance-5-9-02.pdf
http://www.ncahlc.org/download/Best_Pract_DEd.pdf

Quality Matters

Quality Matters is a multi-partner project funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Quality Matters has created a rubric and process for certifying the quality of online courses.
http://www.qualitymatters.org/index.htm

Sloan Consortium

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed to quality online education. It aims to help learning organizations improve the quality of their programming, and has a report identifying five "pillars" of quality higher education online programs: learning effectiveness, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction, cost effectiveness, and access. Sloan-C also has a Web site that collects information about best practices within each of these areas.
http://www.sloan-c.org

These pages identify resources created and maintained by other public and private organizations. This information is provided for the reader's convenience. The U.S. Department of Education is not responsible for controlling or guaranteeing the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Further, the inclusion of these resources does not reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered.